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126-513: The company was directed by An Wang, who was described as an "indispensable leader" and played a personal role in setting business and product strategy until his death in 1990. The company went through transitions between different product lines, beginning with typesetters, calculators, and word processors, then adding computers, copiers, and laser printers. Wang Laboratories filed for bankruptcy protection in August 1992. After emerging from bankruptcy,

252-453: A Z80 ) and 64 KB of RAM (less than the original 1981 IBM PC ). Disk storage was centralized in a master unit and shared by the workstations, and the connection was via high-speed dual coaxial cable "928 Link". Ahead of IBM and Xerox , Wang captured the lead for "the 'intelligent' printer: a high-speed office copier that can be linked electronically" to PCs "and other automated equipment". A year later, The New York Times described

378-412: A belt connected to a two-part shaft located roughly halfway through the machine. The cycle shaft on the left side powers the tilt and rotate mechanism. The operational shaft on the right side powers functions such as spacing, backspacing, and case shifting, as well as serving as a governor, limiting the left-to-right speed with which the carrier moves. A series of spring clutches power the cams which provide

504-631: A bid of 766 million euros. The acquisition of Getronics was confirmed on October 15, 2007 by KPN. Getronics was no longer listed on Euronext after December 12, 2007. In June 2008, Getronics announced that its US operations (formerly Wang ) to CompuCom for cash and a minority stake in CompuCom. These activities include operations in Canada the United States and in Mexico . On December 1, 2008

630-581: A capability which had been pioneered by typewriters such as the Hammond and Blickensderfer in the late 19th century. The Selectric also replaced the traditional typewriter's horizontally-moving carriage with a roller ( platen ) that turned to advance the paper vertically while the typeball and ribbon mechanism moved horizontally across the paper. The Selectric mechanism was notable for using internal mechanical binary coding and two mechanical digital-to-analog converters , called whiffletree linkages, to select

756-485: A carrier wheel. Like the Varityper with which it competed, the original machine required that material be typed twice if the output was to be justified . The first time was to measure the length of the line and count the spaces, recording measurements read from a special dial on the right margin. The second time it was typed, the operator set the measurements into the dial to set justification for each line. The process

882-606: A complete set, but no user needed to; a publication that could use the somewhat bookish, academic Aldine Roman would probably not have much use for the Classified News or Copperplate Gothic (used most often for formal invitations and business cards). The following font families were available for the Composer: In contrast to the Selectric typewriter, only IBM made elements for the standard typefaces usually used with

1008-693: A dedicated Intel-based word processor called the Wang Office Assistant in 1984. This was marketed and sold successfully in the UK to a specific few office equipment dealers who were able to upgrade their clients from electronic typewriters to the Office Assistant. They proved to be very reliable and fast when connected to the Wang bi-directional printer, providing cheap but very fast word processing to small companies (such as solicitors ). The USA

1134-498: A hired voice specialist to give a melodic presentation for the DVX. To avoid false triggering of touch-tones by the prompts (due to input/output cross talk), notch filters were created to remove the touch tone frequencies from the prompts. Prompt languages supported included German, Spanish, French, British English, American English, and Portuguese. Despite the release of the 2200 PCS (Personal Computer System) and 2200 PCS-II models in 1976,

1260-414: A latch to disengage from a cam, allowing it to move an additional input into the whiffletree that subtracts five units of rotation from any negative logic inputs. An additional "low velocity" selector latch is also engaged by certain keys (e.g. period and underscore) which require a reduced striking force so as not to cut the paper; this selector latch engages the low velocity control cam follower, which pulls

1386-770: A little-known variant of the MC/ST called the Mag Card Executive. Shortly after the introduction of the Selectric III, IBM introduced the IBM Personal Typewriter , a hybrid model that used the widely available 88-character “golfball” type elements and correction tape of the Selectric II, but used the newer Selectric III’s ribbon cartridges. Limited to a single fixed pitch (only 12 CPI, though either pica or elite type elements could be used),

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1512-399: A magnetic storage device (either tape in a cartridge, or a magnetic-coated card the same size as an 80-column punched card) for recording, editing, and replaying typed material at ca. 12–15 characters per second. These machines were among the first to provide word processing capability in any form. They used the same elements as ordinary office Selectrics. In 1972, the "Mag Card Executive"

1638-429: A product named NPL (originally named Basic-2C). Kerridge Computer, now a part of ADP , created a product named KCML. Both products support DOS , Windows , and various Unix systems. The BASIC-2 language was enhanced and extended by both companies to meet modern needs. Compared to the 2200 Wang hardware, the compiled solutions improved speed, disk space, memory, and user limits by tens to hundreds of times; although there

1764-403: A reduced cost. Italic and bold were available for some but not all font "families". Up to three point sizes existed for each style and variety. In contrast with the Selectric, a change of type style usually required purchase of a family of type balls, rather than just a single one. Just as in the days of metal type, no single printing shop had every typeface, it was also rare for a user to possess

1890-581: A reduction of jobs in the Netherlands within 18 months. On August 30, 2011, it was announced that 400 underperforming employees would lose their positions. In 2012, KPN sold a majority stake of Getronics Europe and APAC to the Aurelius Group , a German publicly listed industrial holding company. KPN sold Getronics LATAM businesses to OpenGate Capital , a global private equity firm. The Dutch activities of Getronics remained with KPN, first under

2016-542: A shrinking market. Wordplex was taken over by Norsk Data . The market for standalone word processing systems collapsed with the introduction of the personal computer. MultiMate , on the IBM PC, and MS-DOS PC clones, replicated the keyboard and screen interface and functions of the Wang word processor, and was actively marketed to Wang corporate users, while several other WYSIWYG word processing programs also became popular. Wang did make one last play in this arena, producing

2142-507: A single cluster . Unlike the other product lines, such as the VS and OIS (described below), Wang used value-added resellers (VARs) to customize and market 2200 systems. One such creative solution deployed dozens of 2200 systems and was developed in conjunction with Hawaii - and Hong Kong –based firm Algorithms, Inc . It provided paging (beeper) services for much of the Hong Kong market in

2268-543: A tape reader (IBM 2495) that could be connected to 360 series mainframes, and would read the MT/ST tapes. Thus a document typed on an MT/ST Selectric could also be entered into a mainframe data file. In 1966, IBM released the Selectric Composer for use in phototypesetting applications. This highly-modified (and much more-expensive) Selectric produced camera-ready justified copy using proportional fonts in

2394-522: A toy typewriter produced earlier by Marx Toys . IBM bought the rights to the design. The element and carriage mechanism was similar to the design of the Teletype Model 26 and later, which used a rotating cylinder that moved along a fixed platen. The mechanism that positions the typing element ("ball") takes a binary input, and converts this to character offsets using two mechanical digital-to-analog converters, which are " whiffletree " linkages of

2520-462: A variety of font styles ranging from eight points to fourteen points. Material prepared on a properly-adjusted machine by a skillful operator and printed onto baryta ( barium sulfate -coated) paper "would take an expert to tell   ... [that it] was not the product of a Linotype or Monotype machine". Characters were proportionally spaced, three to nine units wide, the size of a unit being selectable as either 1/72", 1/84" or 1/96" to allow for

2646-548: Is credited to influential American designer Eliot Noyes . Noyes had worked on a number of design projects for IBM ; prior to his work on the Selectric, he had been commissioned in 1956 by Thomas J. Watson Jr. to create IBM's first house style : these influential efforts, in which Noyes collaborated with Paul Rand , Marcel Breuer , and Charles Eames , have been referred to as the first "house style" program in American business. The Selectric remained unchanged until 1971 when

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2772-566: Is no Wang support for the 2200, many software applications continue to function. During the 1970s, about 2,000 Wang 2200T computers were shipped to the USSR . Due to the Afghan war in the 1980s, US and COCOM export restrictions ended the shipment of Wang computers. The Soviets were in great need of computers. In 1981, Russian engineers at Minpribor 's Schetmash factory in Kursk reverse engineered

2898-550: Is now being further developed under the by the ASL BiSL foundation. The name PinkRoccade has returned to the company PinkRoccade Local Government ( 's-Hertogenbosch) and PinkRoccade Healthcare (Apeldoorn) which were taken over by Total Specific Solutions (TSS) KPN / Getronics in 2009. IBM Selectric The IBM Selectric (a portmanteau of "selective" and "electric") was a highly successful line of electric typewriters introduced by IBM on 31 July 1961. Instead of

3024-469: The HP 9100A in 1968, and old-line calculator companies such as Monroe and Marchant . Wang calculators were at first sold to scientists and engineers, but the company later became established in financial services industries, which had relied on complicated printed tables for mortgages and annuities. In 1971, Wang believed that calculators would become unprofitable low-margin commodities and decided to leave

3150-587: The IBM 6670 Information Distributor as "closer to the standard envisioned". Wang's first computer, the Wang 3300, was an 8-bit integrated circuit general-purpose minicomputer designed to be the central processor for a multi-terminal time-sharing system . Byte-oriented, it also provided a number of double-byte operand memory commands. Core memory ranged from 4,096 to 65,536 bytes in 4,096-byte increments. Development began after hiring Rick Bensene in June 1968. The product

3276-696: The Selectric II was introduced. The original design was thereafter referred to as the Selectric   I . These machines used the same 88-character typing elements. However they differed from each other in many respects: In 1973 the Correcting Selectric II was announced. It added an internal correction feature to the Selectric   II, intended to eliminate the need for typists to use cover-up tape, "white-out" correction fluid, or typewriter erasers. The carriage on this machine held both

3402-536: The Selectric III , followed by several other Selectric models, some of them word processors or typesetters instead of typewriters, but by then the rest of the industry had caught up, and IBM's new models did not dominate the market the way the first Selectric had. This was to be expected, as by the late 1970s the Selectric typewriter's dominance was under assault from both 35–45 character per second proportional-spacing electronic typewriters with inbuilt memory, like

3528-555: The "Composer" equivalents. This allowed much of the time-consuming manual transcription work and proofreading to be performed on less-expensive equipment, while a final high-quality output could be printed on the Composer. For a number of years after its introduction, the Selectric Composer was considered a highly desirable, powerful desk-sized cold type setting system, affordable by small businesses and organizations. It

3654-423: The "basket" of individual typebars that swung up to strike the ribbon and page in a typical typewriter of the period, the Selectric had an "element" (frequently called a "typeball", or less formally, a "golf ball") that rotated and pivoted to the correct position before striking the paper. The element could be easily interchanged to use different fonts within the same document typed on the same typewriter, resurrecting

3780-450: The 1200 typewriter's "print" mode. The stored text could also be edited using keys on a simple, six-key array. Basic editing functions included Insert, Delete, Skip (character, line), and so on. The labor and cost savings of this device were immediate and remarkable: pages of text no longer had to be retyped to correct simple errors, and projects could be worked on, stored, and then retrieved for use later on. The rudimentary Wang 1200 machine

3906-676: The 1980s by word processors and general-purpose computers. The Electronic Selectric Composer was released in January 1975 by the office division of IBM; it was an automated, direct impression composition unit with a built in memory of up to 8,000 characters. Other features included automatic justification with one keyboarding, automatic print out of columns in one play out and reformatting ease with capability of justified, “rag” right, flush left or virtually any configuration specified. It also had over 125 interchangeable printing fonts (type heads) in sizes from 3 to 12 points. In 1980, IBM introduced

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4032-399: The 1990s to receive mainframe reports and make them viewable online by executives. At Mellon Mortgage , 18 VS systems from the smallest to the largest were used as the enterprise mortgage origination, servicing, finance, documentation, hedge system and mainframe gateway services (for login and printing). Between Mellon Mortgage and parent Mellon Bank, their network contained 45 VS systems and

4158-405: The 2200 CS, after which Wang did not develop or market any new 2200 products. In 1997, Wang reported having about two hundred 2200 systems still under maintenance around the world. Throughout, Wang had always offered maintenance services for the 2200. The 2200 BASIC-2 language was ported to be compiled and run on non-Wang hardware and operating systems by at least two companies. Niakwa Inc created

4284-508: The 800 from Xerox based on Diablo's " daisywheels " and OEMs of Qume which had similar printwheel technology, and CRT-based systems from AES, Lexitron, Vydek, Wang and Xerox. In addition, IBM had already (c. 1977) brought to market the CRT-based Office System/6 and 5520 , both of which used the new 6640 inkjet printer capable of 96 characters per second with two paper trays and sophisticated envelope handling, and

4410-546: The 96-character keyboard was an optional feature. Fitting the additional keys onto the keyboard required shrinking the Return and Backspace keys. This was annoying to many typists, so it was not the default configuration. The keytops on Selectric   III and Electronic Typewriters were larger and more square than those on earlier Selectrics. Some versions of the Electronic Typewriter, the original Model 50, and

4536-520: The Alliance Partners deliver digital workplace services in more than 180 countries, offering one single point of ownership, billing entity, end to end visibility and accountability for the services it delivers. PinkRoccade was the first in the Netherlands to use the management method Information Technology Infrastructure Library . In 2001. the company developed the method ASL as a method of managing applications ('model Looijen'). This method

4662-502: The Bank portion of the network supported about 16,000 Wang Office users for email, report distribution, and scheduling. At Kent and KTec Electronics, two related Houston companies, separate VS clusters were the enterprise systems, handling distribution, manufacturing, and accounting, with significant EDI capability for receiving customer forecasts, sending invoices, sending purchase orders, and receiving shipping notifications. Both systems ran

4788-436: The Composer. GP, which made elements for the Selectric typewriter, did make one Composer element in an Old English typeface. In 1967, a " Magnetic Tape Selectric Composer " appeared, and in 1978, a "Magnetic Card Selectric Composer". The "Electronic Composer" (with approximately 5000 characters of internal memory, similar to the later Magnetic Card model but without external storage) was marketed from 1975. All these models used

4914-510: The DP capabilities of the VS. In many instances, the VS ran smaller enterprises up to about $ 500  million / year and, in larger organizations, found use as a gateway to larger corporate mainframes, handling workstation pass-through and massive print services. At Exxon Corporation , for instance, thirteen 1985 top-of-the-line VS300s at the Houston headquarters were used in the 1980s and into

5040-680: The GEISCO EDI package. Kent, which grew to $ 600 million/year , ran the Arcus distribution software in COBOL and KTec, which grew to $ 250 million/year , ran the CAELUS MRP system for manufacturing in BASIC. In the late 1980s, a British television documentary accused the company of targeting a competitor, Canadian company AES Wordplex , in an attempt to take it out of the market. However,

5166-604: The Getronics Group announced its expansion to North America after acquiring U.S. based company, Pomeroy. The acquisition of Pomeroy was supported by a US$ 815 million financing and recapitalization transaction. On 21 July 2020, GSH Private Capital, led by Kenton Fine, became the new owner-managers of the Dutch headquartered IT services business, in a deal worth €200M. The business has annual revenues of circa €300M. Its 4000 strong team serves over 2000 customers globally. At

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5292-504: The Getronics Group expanded from both a geographical and a portfolio perspective through several new acquisitions, including NEC's UCC business in the UK and Spain (2013); IT consulting companies, Steria Iberica in Spain and Telvent in Spain and South America (2014); and Colt's European managed cloud business, coinciding with the launch of Getronics’ Managed Cloud Services portfolio (2016). had also acquired Thales in Spain and Argentina, which

5418-550: The OIS word processing and list processing packages. The system was Tempest certified , leading to global deployment in American embassies after the Iran hostage crisis. The Z80 platform on which Alliance ran forced it to remain as an 8-bit application in a 64 KB workstation. The first Wang VS computer was introduced in 1977, the same year as Digital Equipment Corporation 's VAX ; both continued for decades. The VS instruction set

5544-524: The Selectric would face direct major competition from electronic typewriters designed and manufactured in Asia, including Brother Industries and Silver Seiko Ltd. of Japan. IBM replaced the Selectric line with the IBM Wheelwriter in 1984, and transferred its typewriter business to the newly formed Lexmark in 1991. The Selectric typewriter was introduced on 31 July 1961. Its industrial design

5670-607: The Selectric. The Wheelwriter featured a replaceable daisy wheel cartridge, had electronic memory, and offered many word processing features. The Selectric's keyboard layout put the underscore, hyphen, and single and double quote characters as pairs on their own keys – an arrangement which had already been used on many earlier electric typewriters , including IBM's own Model A onwards. The traditional layout of mechanical typewriters had offered these characters as shifts from digit keys. Electric typewriter designers had made this change because smaller characters need to hit

5796-461: The Soviets between 1976 and 1984, and were hidden inside a metal support bar. Information was intercepted by detecting the movements of metal bars inside the typewriter (the "latch interposers") by means of magnetometers . The data were then compressed and transmitted in bursts. The bugs were installed in Selectric II and III models. IBM introduced the IBM Wheelwriter in 1984 as a successor to

5922-743: The United Kingdom, it was selected for the DTI Office Automation pilot schemes at the National Coal Board in about 1980. Wang, which had added DVX Message Waiting in 1984, named their 1989 announcement DVX II. Internal research on speech recognition was carried out and implemented for discrete word recognition but was never released to the field. At one point there were 50 members of the Voice Engineering Department. Lawrence E. Bergeron

6048-627: The VS integrated development environment included Assembler , COBOL 74, COBOL 85, BASIC, Ada , RPG II , C, PL/I , FORTRAN , Glossary, MABASIC, SPEED II, and Procedure (a scripting language). Pascal was also supported for I/O co-processor development. The Wang PACE (Professional Application Creation Environment) 4GL and database was used from the mid-1980s onward by customers and third-party developers to build complex applications, sometimes involving many thousands of screens, hundreds of distinct application modules, and serving many hundreds of users. Substantial vertical applications were developed for

6174-550: The VS took hold, the word processor and OIS lines were phased out. The word processing software continued, in the form of a loadable- microcode environment that allowed VS workstations to take on the behavior of traditional Wang WP terminals to operate with the VS and use it as a document server . Wang made inroads into IBM and DEC markets in the 1980s, but did not have a serious impact on IBM's mainframe market due to self-limiting factors. Even though An Wang wanted to compete with IBM, too many Wang salespeople weren't trained enough on

6300-641: The WLOC (Wang Local Office Connection). It contained a Z-80 processor and 64 KB of memory. The original PC-VS hardware used the 928 terminal emulator board; the WLOC boards were used in the subsequent 80286 machines. Getronics Getronics is a Dutch-headquartered ICT services business, founded in 1887 and today employing approximately 4,000 employees across Europe, Asia Pacific, and Latin America. Getronics has over 2000 customers, including Credit Agricole, Intersnack, and Inditex, as well as Ford Motors, which

6426-615: The Wang 2200T and created a computer they named the Iskra 226 . The "COCOM restrictions" theory, though, while popular in the West, is challenged by some Russian computer historians on the basis that development for the Iskra-226 started in 1978, two years before the Afghan war. It is also different from the Wang 2200 in its internals, being more inspired by it rather than a direct clone. It used

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6552-422: The Wang 500 rewrote the microcode to perform word processing functions instead of numerical calculations. The operator of a Wang 1200 typed text on a conventional IBM Selectric keyboard; when the Return key was pressed, the line of text was stored on a cassette tape. One cassette held roughly 20 pages of text and could be "played back" (e.g., the text retrieved) by printing the contents on continuous-form paper in

6678-512: The Wang VS by third-party software houses throughout the 1980s in COBOL, PACE, BASIC, PL/I, and RPG II. The Wang OFFICE family of applications and Wang WP were both popular applications on the VS. Word Processing ran on the VS through services that emulated the OIS environment and downloaded the WP software as "microcode" (in Wang terminology) to VS workstations. The press and the industry referred to

6804-409: The Wang family would retain control of the company even after going public. He created a second class of stock, class B, with higher dividends but only one-tenth the voting power of class C. The public mostly bought class B shares; the Wang family retained most of the class C shares. The letters B and C were used to ensure that brokerages would fill any Wang stock orders with class B shares unless class C

6930-426: The calculator business within a few years. Wang's first attempt at a word processor was the Wang 1200, announced in late 1971 but not available until 1972. The design consisted of the logic of a Wang 500 calculator hooked up to an OEM-manufactured IBM Selectric typewriter for keying and printing, and dual cassette decks for storage. Harold Koplow , who had written the microcode for the Wang 700 and its derivative

7056-443: The carriage. The typist would press (and release) the correction key and then re-type the erroneous character, either lifting it off the page or (if using other than the correctable ribbon) covering it with white-out powder, then type the correct character. Any number of mistakes could be corrected this way, but the process was entirely manual, as the machine had no memory of the typed characters. The Selectric II had been announced and

7182-480: The character to be typed. Selectrics and their descendants eventually captured 75 percent of the United States market for electric typewriters used in business. By the Selectric's 25th anniversary, in 1986, a total of more than 13 million machines had been made and sold. By the 1970s and 1980s, the typewriter market had matured under the market dominance of large companies in Europe and the United States. Eventually

7308-418: The class of machines made by Wang, including the VS, as "minicomputers," and Kenney's 1992 book refers to the VS line as "minicomputers" throughout. Although some argue that the high-end VS machines and their successors should qualify as mainframes , Wang avoided this term. In his autobiography, An Wang, rather than calling the VS 300 a mainframe, said that it "verges on mainframe performance." He went on to draw

7434-524: The clutch on the cycle shaft for one cycle, providing power to the filter shaft, whose lobes thrust the interposer towards the front (operator end) of the machine. When the interposer moves, each of its lugs engages one of a set of bars (selector bails) that run from left to right across the keyboard mechanism. In a machine with a North American keyboard, there are five "negative logic" selector bails (two for tilt and three for rotation), and one "positive logic" bail (called "minus five") for accessing characters in

7560-611: The company also had offices in Belgium, France and Germany. In the same year the name was changed to Geveke Electronics . In 1985 the company was introduced on the Amsterdam stock exchange. In 1988, its name changed to Getronics NV . Getronics was traded by the AMX index abbreviation 23dGET. The main focus of the company became computer networking and maintenance. In 1999, Getronics acquired Wang Global (who had recently acquired Olsy,

7686-578: The company changed its name to Wang Global . It was acquired by Getronics of the Netherlands in 1999, becoming Getronics North America, then was sold to KPN in 2007 and CompuCom in 2008. Wang went public on August 26, 1967, with the issuance of 240,000 shares at $ 12.50 per share on the American Stock Exchange . The stock closed the day above $ 40, valuing the company's equity at approximately $ 77 million, of which An Wang and his family owned about 63%. An Wang took steps to ensure that

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7812-506: The company has served for over 35 years. Getronics is also founding member of the Global Workspace Alliance , a consortium of leading local IT companies delivering IT services in over 180 countries. In July 2020, GSH Private Capital acquired the business in a deal worth €200M. Getronics was then led by Kenton Fine as chairman and CEO. Since 2024, Stuart Deignan has taken over the position as CEO of Getronics. In 1887,

7938-419: The company was created as N.V. Groeneveld, van der Poll & Co's Electrotechnische Fabriek Amsterdam (GVPC). The enterprise was involved with electrical installations, such as the monitoring and control of public facilities and shipping. After World War II GVPC set up a technical sales office Groenpol as a separate entity. In 1950, the holding company GVPC changed its name to Groenpol NV , and in 1965

8064-588: The conclusion of the acquisition agreement with KPN, marking a new chapter in Getronics’ history. Global Workspace Alliance is a jointly managed IT services consortium. Founded and led by Getronics, members include along CompuCom , Pomeroy, SPIE, Indra, AGCN, Centric, InfoCare, S&T, Eire Systems, NSC and Topnew Info. Global Workspace Alliance 2.0 was launched in April 2016 with a further commitment of joint innovation and sharing of IP between partners. Together,

8190-499: The corporate data-processing decision-makers. The chapter in Wang's book dealing with them shows that he saw them as "a beachhead in the Fortune 1000." The Wang VS was Wang's entry into IT departments. In his book, An Wang notes that, to sell the VS, "we aggressively recruited salesmen with strong backgrounds in data processing ... who had experience dealing with MIS executives, and who knew their way around Fortune 1000 companies." As

8316-435: The desired character. Each interposer also has a tab that slots in between loose steel balls in a race, the size of balls and race selected precisely to leave a total gap barely larger than the width of the interposer tab, such that only one interposer tab can fit in the free space and thus only one letter can be selected at a time. When the interposer is depressed, it engages a metal bar (cycle clutch latch link) that connects

8442-492: The distinction between the "mainframes" at the high end of IBM's line ("just as Detroit would rather sell large cars ... so IBM would rather sell mainframes")—in which IBM had a virtual monopoly—with the "mid-sized systems" in which IBM had not achieved dominance: "The minicomputer market is still healthy. This is good for the customer and good for minicomputer makers." An Wang felt a personal sense of rivalry with IBM, partly due to heavy-handed treatment by IBM in 1955 to 1956 over

8568-399: The distribution division became Groenpol Industrial Sales . In 1968, Groenpol NV merged with another listed company, Geveke SA. The new name was Geveke & Groenpol NV . In 1970, SHV brought the holding company. In 1972, Groenpol Industrial Sales made a partial takeover of the technical trading Merchant & Co , the company started sales and service of computer peripherals. Meanwhile,

8694-503: The documentary came to no conclusion regarding this. Wang's approach was called "The Gas Cooker Program," named after similar programs to give discounts on new gas stoves by trading in an old one. Wang was accused of targeting Wordplex by offering a large discount on Wang OIS systems with a trade-in of Wordplex machines, regardless of the age or condition of the trade-in machine. Based on its good reputation with users and its program of aggressive discounts, Wang gained an increasing share of

8820-418: The drive shaft (which is rotating) to move the ends of the links in the whiffletree linkage, which sums (adds together) the amounts ("weights") of movement corresponding to the selected bits. The sum of the weighted inputs is the required movement of the typing element. There are two sets of similar mechanisms, one for tilt, one for rotate. The typing element has four rows of 22 characters. By tilting and rotating

8946-488: The early 1980s. Overshadowed by the Wang VS, the 2200 languished as a cost-effective but forgotten solution in the hands of the customers who had it. In the late 1980s, Wang revisited the 2200 series one last time, offering 2200 customers a new 2200 CS with bundled maintenance for less than customers were paying at the time just for maintenance of their aging 2200s. The 2200 CS had an Intel 386 processor , updated disk units, and other peripherals. Most 2200 customers upgraded to

9072-403: The element is connected) to one of four possible locations. The rotate tape is wrapped around a spring-loaded pulley located in the middle of the carrier. The rotate pulley under the tilt ring is connected through a universal joint (called a "dog bone", which it resembles) to the center of the tilt ring. The element is spring-latched onto that central post. The element rotates counter-clockwise when

9198-453: The element to the location of a character, the element can be thrust against the ribbon and platen, leaving an imprint of the chosen character. Tilt and rotate movements are transferred to the carrier (the mechanism that supports the element), which moves across the page, by two taut metal tapes, one for tilt and one for rotate. The tilt and rotate tapes are both anchored to the right side of the carrier. They both wrap around separate pulleys at

9324-490: The fix was a success. Vaughan was recognized for the accomplishment in 1974. In 1964 IBM introduced the " Magnetic Tape Selectric Typewriter " and in 1969, a "Magnetic Card Selectric Typewriter". These were sometimes referred to as the "MT/ST" and "MC/ST", respectively. The MC/ST was also available in a "communicating" version which could emulate an IBM 2741 terminal or run its native Correspondence Code. These featured electronically interfaced typing mechanisms and keyboards and

9450-526: The history of computing regards the earliest PC as one which contained a microprocessor , which the 2200 PCS did not. However, the self-contained PCS-II incorporated many of the innovations that would later be seen in PCs, including the first 5.25-inch floppy drives that were designed for the PCS-II by Shugart Associates . The original Wang PC was released in April 1982 to counter the IBM PC, which had been released

9576-588: The later Model 65 and 85, could use 96-character elements with proportionally-spaced typestyles in addition to 10-pitch and 12-pitch typestyles. This proportional spacing was based on a unit of 1/60 of an inch, since 10-pitch characters took six such units, and 12-pitch characters took five such units. (Many daisywheel typewriters, offering similar capabilities, also had daisywheel elements for 15-pitch typing, using four units per character.) The proportional typestyles offered for these typewriters had previously been offered, along with some others, on 88-character elements for

9702-402: The low velocity cable connected to the cam in the carrier, causing the low velocity lobe to be used instead of the usual high velocity lobe. Additionally, punctuation marks are deliberately placed about the ball so the maximum amount of energy is used to position the element prior to striking, further reducing the impact. The selector latches that remain engaged with the latch bail cause cams on

9828-494: The main typing ribbon cartridge and two small spools for a correction ribbon. A new ribbon type, the Correctable Film ribbon, was introduced at the same time. This produced typing quality equal to the carbon film ribbon, but with a pigment designed to be easily removed from paper. There were two types of correction tapes: the transparent and slightly adhesive "Lift-Off" tape (for use with the correctable film ribbon), or

9954-425: The manual and convinced An Wang to turn it into a real project. The word processing machine – the Wang 1200 WPS – was introduced in June 1976 and was an instant success, as was its successor, the 1977 Wang OIS (Office Information System). The OIS was a multi-user system. Each workstation looked like a typical terminal but contained its own Intel 8080 microprocessor (later versions used

10080-399: The motion needed to perform functions such as backspacing. When the typist presses a key, a pawl on the key lever depresses a matching metal bar (interposer) for that key. The interposer, which is oriented front to back in the machine, has one or more short projections (lugs) protruding from its bottom edge. Each interposer has a unique combination of lugs, corresponding to the binary code for

10206-560: The name KPN Corporate Market , and from January 1, 2013 under the name ' KPN IT Solutions '. For international business the name Getronics has remained in place. In June 2015, the remaining share KPN owned in Getronics Europe and APAC was sold to the Aurelius Group. In November, Getronics won a five-year IT services contract from automotive services company RAC Limited . Under AURELIUS’ wing, between 2012 and 2017,

10332-481: The name Getronics PinkRoccade. On October 13, 2008, the name was shortened from Getronics PinkRoccade to Getronics. On June 29, 2005, a stock exchange reverse stock split of 7 to 1 took place. In early 2007, Getronics had approximately 24,000 employees in more than 25 countries. Around the beginning of July 2007 several companies started to look into taking over Getronics including KPN , Capgemini and an unnamed American private equity firm . On July 30, KPN made

10458-582: The number was reduced to 7,000 (a thousand of which were based in the United Kingdom ). In 2005, before the acquisition by Getronics, the Dutch State had an interest of 25.8% in PinkRoccade. On March 14, Getronics completed the acquisition of PinkRoccade. Getronics paid a total of €355 million in cash. With the acquisition, it became the largest IT service company in the Netherlands under

10584-487: The opposite direction of rotation. Each negative logic selector bail that is displaced by the interposer in turn pulls a latch interposer and link which causes a selector latch near the cycle shaft to be pulled away from the latch bail. The latches pulled away in this manner are disengaged for the rest of the cycle, while the remaining latches take part in character selection, hence the term "negative logic". The minus five selector bail pulls an interposer and link which causes

10710-511: The paper with less force than most, and pairing these characters in this way avoided the need to adjust the force based on shift state. About a decade later, this character pairing was formalized in the American Standards Association X4.14-1971 standard as typewriter pairing (colloquially a typewriter-paired keyboard ), along with bit-paired keyboards . Typewriter pairing became the only supported arrangement in

10836-523: The previous August and which had gained wide acceptance in the market for which Wang traditionally positioned the OIS system. It was based on the Intel 8086 microprocessor, a faster CPU than the IBM PC's 8088. A hardware/software package that permitted the Wang PC to act as a terminal to the OIS and VS products was available. The first version of the hardware component was made of two large add-in boards called

10962-447: The product that made computers popularly accessible." In Koplow's words, "Dr. Wang kicked me out of marketing. I, along with Dave Moros, was relegated to Long Range Planning – 'LRPed'. This ... was tantamount to being fired: 'here is a temporary job until you find another one in some other company.'" Although he and Moros perceived the assignment to design a word processing machine as busywork, they went ahead anyway. They wrote

11088-462: The right side of the frame; the tilt pulley is fixed, while the rotate pulley is attached to the shift arm, actuated by the Shift and Caps Lock keys. The tapes extend across the machine behind the carrier, and then wrap around two separate pulleys at the left side of the frame. The tilt tape is then anchored to a small, quarter-circle pulley which, through a link, tips the tilt ring (the device to which

11214-508: The rights to his magnetic-core patents (this encounter formed the subject of a long chapter in Wang's own book, Lessons ). According to Charles C. Kenney, " Jack Connors remembers being in Wang's office one day when the Doctor pulled out a chart on which he had plotted Wang's growth and projected that Wang Laboratories would overtake IBM sometime in the middle of the 1990s. 'He had kept it a long time,' says Connors. 'And he believed it.'" Wang

11340-434: The rotate tape is tightened. The spiral "clock" spring underneath the rotate pulley rotates the element in the clockwise direction. As the carrier moves across the page (such as when it returns), the tapes travel over their pulleys, but the spring-loaded pulleys on the ball carrier do not pivot or rotate. To position the ball, both of the pulleys on the left side of the frame are moved by their whiffletree linkages, actuated by

11466-444: The sale of the business unit Business Application Services (BAS) was completed at Capgemini . The sale included 2,300 employees and customer base of BAS. Capgemini paid 255 million euros. Business Solutions, the last remaining unsold part of Business Application Services (BAS), consisting of 800 employees who were engaged in local government and healthcare sector found refuge with Total Specific Solutions which had previously Everest in

11592-562: The same BASIC language (named T-BASIC) with a few enhancements. Many research papers reference calculations done on the Iskra 226. The machine's designers were nominated for a 1985 State Prize. Later, a somewhat scaled-down Unix implementation was created for Iskra-226, which was used in the Soviet Union . Wang had a line called Alliance, which was based on the high-end OIS (140/145) hardware architecture. It had more powerful software than

11718-462: The same Selectric Composer output (printing) mechanism. However, the magnetic or internal storage allowed these improved models to avoid the need to type in justified text twice, or to manually set the mechanism for justification of each line. Furthermore, tapes or cards originally recorded on the much less-expensive and easier-to-operate Selectric typewriter versions, the MT/ST or MC/ST, could be read by

11844-435: The same sentence, slowed work down and was a source of owner dissatisfaction. (In typical use, Selectric elements were changed infrequently.) The small plastic balls were themselves somewhat fragile and not designed to withstand frequent handling. Nevertheless, the Composer allowed much more flexible use of different typefonts, allowing small businesses and organizations to approach the capabilities of professional typesetters, at

11970-460: The selected drive shaft cams. When the rotate pulley is moved to the right or left, the rotate tape spins the element to the appropriate location. When the tilt pulley is moved, it tips the tilt ring to the appropriate location. When it moves, the tape rotates the spring-loaded pulley on the ball carrier independent of the carrier's location on the page. Case is shifted from lowercase to uppercase (and associated shifted punctuation symbols) by rotating

12096-710: The service arm of Olivetti) for 3.7 billion guilders (approximately 1.8 billion Euros). Wang Global, based in the United States, was active in 42 countries, which made Getronics a global player. This was strategically advantageous for working with Getronics' international customers. PinkRoccade was founded as Roccade (RCC) in 1950 providing punched card services for the Dutch Ministry of the Interior. In 1993, RCC took over Bouwfonds Informatica and merged with Pink Elephant and becoming PinkRoccade. In 2003, PinkRoccade had 8700 employees. After two rounds of redundancies

12222-497: The successor X4.23-1982 standard. The Selectric also added a dedicated key for 1 / ! . The typist no longer had to use a lowercase L , nor overstrike the single quote and period characters, as had been the practice on most earlier typewriters. These changes were later copied by the IBM Model D electric typewriter (1967), and later still by DEC 's VT52 terminal (1975) and the original IBM PC (1981). Typewriter pairing

12348-423: The three sizes of type. (A monospaced "Typewriter Font", in which all characters occupied four units, was available for brief imitations of conventional typed text.) Tab stops could be positioned only at intervals of one-sixth of an inch, or one pica . To support backspacing over previously typed characters, the spacing code for the last forty or so characters typed was mechanically stored by small sliding plates in

12474-531: The three type sizes) and a series of letters and numbers identifying the font, size, and variation, for example "UN-11-B" for Univers 11-point bold ( Adrian Frutiger had adapted his Univers font specifically for the Selectric Composer). In addition to Univers, a Century , Times Roman -like font, and later an "Aldine" font ( Bembo ) were available, as was a Symbols font. However, the Composer, with its relatively small market, never had anything like

12600-452: The time of the acquisition, its blue chip clients included RAC, Ford, and Inditex. Under the new ownership, the company remains focused on delivering IT services and solutions with focus on user experience, including digital workplace, cloud services, applications, smart buildings, IT support and cybersecurity. In 2023 , Getronics Netherlands reestablished its presence in the Dutch market as an independent company. This relaunch followed

12726-413: The top plastic surface and the legend "96", which always appears along with the font name and pitch. The 96- and 88-character elements are mechanically incompatible with each other (they will not fit on each other's machines) and 96-character elements were not available in as many fonts as the older 88-character types. Most Selectric IIIs and Electronic Typewriters had keys only for 92 printable characters;

12852-451: The type used for adding and subtracting in linkage-type mechanical analog computers. (The nomenclature used by IBM Office Product Customer Engineers and in IBM maintenance publications for the machine's "whiffletrees" is "Rotate and Tilt Differentials".) Every character position on the element has a two-part binary code, one for tilt and one for rotate. The motor at the back of the machine drives

12978-572: The typewriter was significantly less expensive than either the Selectric II or Selectric III and targeted the home and consumer markets. There is at least one known case of the Selectric exploited as a covert listening device of the type known as a " keyboard logger ". In 1984, bugs were discovered in at least 16 Selectric typewriters in the U.S. Embassy in Moscow and the U.S. Consulate in Leningrad. The highly sophisticated devices were planted by

13104-435: The variety of typefaces available as there were for the Selectric (see below). Each font required separate elements for italic and bold versions, and a separate set of roman/italic/bold balls was required for each font size. Not all typefaces were available in bold and italic in every size for every font. Bold italic, condensed, and light fonts were not available. The need to change elements frequently, sometimes multiple times in

13230-412: The white "Cover-Up" tape (for cloth, Tech-3, and carbon film ribbons). The correction tape was changed independently from the typing ribbon. The correction key (an extra key at the bottom right of the keyboard) backspaced the carriage by one space and also put the machine in a mode wherein the next character typed would use the correction tape instead of the normal ribbon, and furthermore would not advance

13356-413: The year taken from Getronics. The part that dealt Microsoft and .NET development came into the hands of Delaware Consultancy . On March 31, 2009, the parent company announced a shrinkage of staff to 1,400 employees. On June 17, 2011, Getronics CEO announced a further contraction of 2,500 jobs. Partly by offshoring , but also because disappointing results made it necessary that there should occur

13482-440: Was a single-user system. The improved VP model increased performance more than tenfold and enhanced the language (renamed BASIC-2 ). The 2200 VP evolved into a desktop computer and larger MVP system to support up to 16 workstations and utilized commercial disk technologies that appeared in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The disk subsystems could be attached to up to 15 computers giving a theoretical upper limit of 240 workstations in

13608-529: Was a well-regarded calculator company. The dollar price of Wang calculators was in the mid-four-figures. They used Nixie tube readouts, performed transcendental functions , had varying degrees of programmability , and used magnetic core memory . The 200 and 300 calculator models were available as time-shared simultaneous (SE) packages that had a central processing unit the size of a small suitcase connected by cables leading to four individual desktop display/keyboard units. Competition included HP , which introduced

13734-559: Was about to introduce Qume-based printers for the existing System/6 range and the new Displaywriter launched in June 1980 and described by IBM as "not your father's Selectric". Nevertheless, IBM had a large installed base of Selectric typewriters and to retain customer loyalty it made sense to introduce updated models. The Selectric III featured a 96-character element vs. the previous 88-character element. IBM's series of "Electronic Typewriters" used this same 96-character element. The 96-character elements can be identified by yellow printing on

13860-465: Was announced in February 1969 and shipped to its first customer on March 29, 1971. Wang developed and marketed several lines of small computer systems for both word processing and data processing. Instead of a clear, linear progression, the product lines overlapped and, in some cases, borrowed technology from each other. The most identifiable Wang minicomputer performing recognizable data processing

13986-553: Was compatible with the IBM System/360 series, but it did not run any System/360 system software. The VS operating system and all system software were built from the ground up to support interactive users as well as batch operations. The VS was aimed at the business data processing market in general and IBM in particular. While many programming languages were available, the VS was programmed in COBOL . Other languages supported in

14112-526: Was developed under contract to phototypesetter manufacturer Compugraphic , which retained the manufacturing rights of the Linasec. The success of the machine led Compugraphic to decide to manufacture it themselves, causing Wang to lose out on a million dollars in revenue. The Wang LOCI-2 (Logarithmic Computing Instrument) desktop calculator (the earlier LOCI-1 in September 1964 was not a real product)

14238-406: Was in production when a cam timing issue was identified. The type head ball would strike the character and leave small remnants of ink of the character that was meant to be erased. A lower level engineer, Joe L. Vaughan, overheard the top engineers discussing the issue and offered a solution. Parts were machined for a change to the cam mechanism without introducing any further delays to production, and

14364-496: Was instrumental in managing the Voice Engineering Department at Wang Labs. He promoted the purchase of a VAX-11/780 for 'real-time' signal processing research and created the Peripheral Signal Processor board (PSP). The PSP was placed into 16 racks to handle 128 phone lines for the DVX (Digital Voice Exchange). Wang's Digital Voice Exchange supported the renting of voice mailboxes. Voice prompts were created by

14490-431: Was introduced in January 1965. Using factor combining , it was the first desktop calculator capable of computing logarithms , which was quite an achievement for a machine without any integrated circuits . The electronics included 1,275 discrete transistors . It performed multiplication by adding logarithms, and roundoff in the display conversion was noticeable: 2 × 2 yielded 3.999999999. From 1965 to about 1971, Wang

14616-578: Was no provision for setting the machine to vary the letter and word spacing to create justified copy. Some of the fonts originally offered with the Mag Card Executive would later be made available for the Model 50 electronic typewriter, which supported proportional spacing with 96-character elements. In April 1973, the IBM Mag Card II Typewriter was announced, providing space for up to 8,000 characters in electronic memory. IBM also sold

14742-427: Was offered. Like IBM's earlier typebar-based "Executive" models this offered proportional spacing, but unlike them, based on multiples of a 1/60" unit size with up to seven units per character, instead of a unit size of 1/32", 1/36", or 1/45", depending on the size of the typestyle, with up to five units per character as was used on the original "Executive" typewriters. Unlike the various "Selectric Composer" models, there

14868-613: Was one of the first computer companies to advertise on television and the first to run an ad during the Super Bowl in 1978. Their first ad literally cast Wang Laboratories as David and IBM as Goliath, several years before the famous 1984 Apple Computer ad. A later ad depicted Wang Laboratories as a helicopter gunship taking aim at IBM. Wang wanted to compete against IBM as a computer company, selling to management information system departments. The calculators, word processing systems, and OIS were sold into individual departments, bypassing

14994-625: Was rebranded Connectis and became part of the Getronics Group. In 2017, Getronics Group (with both Connectis and Getronics brands) was acquired by strategic investor Bottega InvestCo S.à r.l. The majority shareholder of Bottega is the US/Brazilian entrepreneur Nana Baffour, who operates in the IT services market through Grupo Cimcorp in Brazil; prestigious financing partners include White Oak Global Advisors, Permira PDM and H.I.G. WhiteHorse. In 2018,

15120-484: Was seen on many other computer keyboards, particularly the influential Model M (1985). The new layout was not universal, however. Internationally, many layouts kept the bit-paired arrangement. This is easily visible in ⇧ Shift + 2 yielding " , as on the standard UK layout. The bit-paired symbols are also retained in the Japanese keyboard layout . Mechanically, the Selectric borrowed some design elements from

15246-591: Was specifically requested. Wang stock had been listed on the New York Stock Exchange , but this maneuver was not quite acceptable under NYSE's rules, and Wang was forced to delist with NYSE and relist on the more liberal American Stock Exchange . After Wang's 1992 bankruptcy, holders of class B and C common stock were treated the same. The company's first major project was the Linasec in 1964, an electronic special-purpose computer designed to justify paper tape for use on automated Linotype machines . It

15372-479: Was surprised at the success of this machine in the UK, but could not supply a spell-check programme in time before the PC. The PC, with its flexibility of combining word processors with other programs such as spreadsheets, had rendered such a specific-task machine unsellable. The Wang Office Assistant had a short life span of four years. The Wang DVX was one of the first integrated switchboard and voicemail systems. In

15498-456: Was tedious and slow, but did provide a way to get camera-ready, proportionally spaced, justified copy from a desk-sized, affordable machine. The elements for the Selectric Composer would physically fit on a Selectric and vice versa, but were not interchangeable because the characters were arranged and positioned differently around the element. Selectric Composer elements can be distinguished by their colored index arrow (the color indicated which of

15624-511: Was the Wang 2200 , which appeared in May 1973. Unlike some other desktop computers such as the HP 9830 , it had a CRT in a cabinet that also included an integrated computer-controlled compact cassette storage unit and keyboard. It was microcoded to run interpreted Wang BASIC . It was widely used in small- and medium-sized businesses worldwide; about 65,000 systems were shipped. The original 2200

15750-540: Was the precursor of the Wang Office Information System (OIS), which revolutionized the way typing projects were performed in the American workplace. Following the Wang 1200, Harold Koplow and David Moros made another attempt at designing a word processor. They started by first writing the user's manual for the product. A 2002 Boston Globe article refers to Koplow as a "wisecracking rebel" who "was waiting for dismissal when, in 1975, he developed

15876-487: Was usually leased, including a service contract for the skilled labor required to fix and adjust it. The Selectric Composer was accorded respect and affection among small publishers, unrivaled until the appearance of the Apple Macintosh , laser printer , and desktop publishing software. Ultimately the system proved a transitional product, as it was displaced by cheaper and faster phototypesetting, and then in

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